The Sickly Beauty Gives Up Struggling [Rebirth] Chapter 28

Li Rong decisively hung up the call and, with remarkable calm, tucked the phone back into Cen Xiao’s pocket.

Pressing one hand against the sink, he pushed himself upright and feigned nonchalance as he took a step forward. “What dishes did you guys order?”

Cen Xiao dried his hands slowly and turned, noticing the faint flush at the tips of Li Rong’s ears. Without calling him out, he replied leisurely: “Fresh-cut beef, pickled chili beef, duck intestines, tripe, crispy pork, and ice jelly.”

Li Rong frowned slightly. “That’s it?”

“I’d just finished ordering when I came out. Jian Fu’s probably added more by now.”

Li Rong rubbed his flat stomach and sighed, “I’m starving. Let’s go.”

Cen Xiao reminded him, “Your phone.”

Li Rong patted his pocket, where the outline of his phone was visible. “Got it.”

Talking with someone as sharp as Cen Xiao was efficient.

Li Rong wanted to avoid a certain topic; Cen Xiao knew he wanted to avoid it. Without a word, they both smoothly moved on to another.

Before leaving, Li Rong instinctively glanced back at the floor where he had struggled with the thief.

The bloodstains had been wiped clean, but the white scratch marks from the knife remained. He still vividly remembered the thrill he felt when he stabbed toward the man’s neck.

It was the first time he had experienced such a peculiar sensation. For at least a second, his rationality had completely fled, replaced by an overwhelming sense of exhilaration and release.

When moral constraints and societal rules fail to satisfy one’s deepest desires, human nature reverts to its primal instincts.

He couldn’t allow himself to go that far.

Li Rong looked down at his clean palm, clenched it tightly, then turned off the lights and followed Cen Xiao, locking the door behind them.

The night breeze blew past, lifting his hair from his forehead. Squinting against it, he stepped down the stairs.

The path from his house to the neighborhood’s exit was serene and soothing, and the quiet night lent a leisurely air to their walk.

Casually, Li Rong asked, “How did you know my house’s door code?”

Cen Xiao was silent for a few seconds, glancing at him before suddenly saying, “No one’s been splashing paint or sending funeral wreaths anymore, right?”

Li Rong understood immediately.

Fine. That was Cen Xiao’s way of saying he didn’t want to discuss the topic further.

Wisely, he replied, “Not for a while now. It’s been over ten days without a single package notification—I almost miss it. Honestly, with a bit of an open mind, I could’ve just treated it as netizens paying their respects to my parents.”

Cen Xiao commented, “The public eye always moves on eventually.”

“Of course.” Li Rong shrugged indifferently.

They walked quietly for a while. Suddenly, Cen Xiao slowed his pace and spoke in a low voice:
“You realize Jian Fu was joking, right? That kind of timeframe…”

Li Rong: “…”

He knew. And yet, a short timeframe wouldn’t have been such a bad thing—because it really had hurt a bit. Definitely first-love skill.

Of course, he hadn’t exactly cooperated much either.

Li Rong glanced up at the streetlamp overhead, its clean light untainted by even a single insect.

“When does the heating start? I wonder if the school dorms will be warm enough.”

Cen Xiao followed his lead seamlessly. “If A High’s dorms aren’t sufficient, then nowhere in the country is.”

Li Rong nodded in agreement. “True.”

He knew the dorms at A High were decent—after all, he’d lived there in his past life. But finding a topic on short notice meant resorting to small talk.

The lakeside path wasn’t long, and they were soon nearing the neighborhood’s exit.

Li Rong suddenly remembered something. “When you came into my house earlier, what did you call me?”

At that time, his mind had been on high alert, teetering on the edge of losing control. Yet one phrase from Cen Xiao had calmed him instantly.

That moment had brought back memories of his previous life.

He trusted that Cen Xiao’s methods would always be more extreme and terrifying than his own. So when he heard that low, almost lover-like murmur, spoken with an undeniable authority, he felt an inexplicable sense of peace.

It was the same nickname Cen Xiao had used in the past to tease him, often just to provoke him.

For instance, there was that one week when Li Rong refused to come home five nights in a row, using excuses like experiments, papers, and exams to hole up at the research institute. The institute had a lounge, and he was perfectly content to stay there alone.

But Cen Xiao was not easily fooled. Most of the time, he didn’t even bother reasoning with him. Even if Li Rong genuinely needed to work overtime, Cen Xiao would send a driver to pick him up, and he’d have no choice but to go back.

Naturally, Li Rong didn’t hide his displeasure.

But Cen Xiao would just have the driver hand him the phone, and with the driver right there, call him “baby.” He didn’t care in the slightest if Li Rong felt embarrassed.

So to the him of the past, this wasn’t exactly a pleasant memory.

But now, he had come to terms with it and didn’t mind anymore.

People could insult him with terms like “b*stard” or “little beast,” so why should one “baby” from Cen Xiao upset him?

Cen Xiao paused, glancing at the dewdrops clinging to the bushes by the roadside, and asked, “Feeling cold?”

Li Rong pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and chuckled lightly. “Not too bad.”

If this continued, they might open five hundred topics in five hundred meters.

Li Rong was about to give up on the conversation when Cen Xiao suddenly reached out and lightly touched his earlobe with his fingertip.

Li Rong instinctively flinched but didn’t pull away. Cen Xiao’s fingers were warm, making his earlobe feel even cooler. The lingering sensation where he was touched lasted for quite a while.

Cen Xiao withdrew his hand. “Pretty cold. Let’s walk faster.”

Li Rong blinked and softly replied, “Mm.”

After leaving the neighborhood, they crossed a street, turned a corner, and walked past a traffic light to arrive at the hot pot restaurant.

Jian Fu looked like he was about to turn green from waiting.

This was his first time staring at food for so long without eating it.

The waiter had asked several times if he wanted to turn off the heat, but Jian Fu refused every time, convinced that Cen Xiao and Li Rong would appear in the next second.

Jian Fu glared at them mournfully. “You two better give me a good explanation!”

Cen Xiao unzipped his coat and hung it on the back of a chair. “He almost killed a thief. I stopped him.”

Li Rong glanced at the hot pot base—half spicy beef tallow and half tomato broth.

He raised an eyebrow slightly, folded his coat neatly, stuffed it into a plastic bag, and said flatly, “I just misjudged the angle. I wasn’t in some criminal frenzy.”

Jian Fu: “…”

Jian Fu’s expression grew complicated. “Was that story tailored just for me? I’m so honored.”

To begin with, he didn’t think Li Rong, who seemed weak enough to get winded just climbing stairs, could kill a thief. Moreover, he believed the roles in the story were reversed—surely it was Li Rong stopping Cen Xiao, not the other way around.

Li Rong smiled faintly and rolled up his sleeves. “Even pandas can kill when provoked.” Then, looking at Cen Xiao across from him, he added pointedly, “And why did you order tomato broth?”

He couldn’t shake the feeling that Cen Xiao understood him a bit too well.

A vague suspicion stirred in his mind. But the idea was so far-fetched. He had inexplicably returned to six years ago after being poisoned to death, but Cen Xiao hadn’t died. There was no way he could have followed him back.

Cen Xiao’s expression remained as calm as ever. Jian Fu, however, answered excitedly, “It was the waiter’s recommendation! This place’s most famous bases are beef tallow and tomato. We might not come back, so I figured I’d try both. What, you’ve never had a split pot before?”

Li Rong stared blankly at the bubbling broth and pressed his lips together.

So it was the waiter’s suggestion, and Jian Fu ordered it.

Slowly, his smile faded. He picked up a piece of soft-cooked tomato from the pot, but before it reached his plate, the pressure from his chopsticks caused it to fall apart and slip back into the broth.

Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe Cen Xiao had always been like this in high school. After all, he hadn’t interacted with the high school version of Cen Xiao before.

No matter how many doubts he had, the fact that Cen Xiao had been alive in the previous life was enough to invalidate all his guesses.

Jian Fu poured a plate of fresh beef into the spicy pot. The bubbling oil instantly quieted.
“Cook your own. Order more if you want.”

Li Rong rarely ate hot pot. His stomach couldn’t handle spicy food, so he added a few pieces of tofu to the tomato broth and glanced at Cen Xiao.

Cen Xiao silently emptied another plate of fresh beef into the tomato broth.

Jian Fu glanced over and said nonchalantly, “Let Li Rong cook his own. He can eat as much as he wants.”

Cen Xiao picked out two slices of beef for himself. “I’m eating too.”

Jian Fu was surprised. “You usually only eat from the spicy pot?”

Cen Xiao calmly placed a piece of meat in his mouth. “Didn’t you say it’s a specialty?”

Jian Fu frowned, feeling something was off.

He had known Cen Xiao since they were kids and was often swayed by others’ opinions. In contrast, Cen Xiao was incredibly stubborn, rarely changing his mind based on someone else’s suggestion. Jian Fu liked following him because Cen Xiao made decisions while he preferred letting others decide.

Someone who exclusively ate from the spicy pot was now willingly trying the tomato base?

But… it wasn’t a big deal. Jian Fu shrugged it off.

Li Rong squinted, watching Cen Xiao finish two pieces of tomato-flavored beef.

It felt eerily similar to his previous life, where he would order a table full of Cantonese dishes, and Cen Xiao would eat steamed sweet potatoes and wonton noodles with him—light dishes entirely unlike his usual preferences.

Back then, Li Rong sometimes felt a flicker of delusion. Maybe because he had a history of stomach problems and the doctor said it was prone to recurrence, Cen Xiao refrained from forcing him to eat things he didn’t like. Just as he had allowed Li Rong to stay at the research institute after slashing his arm.

It was as if, beneath all the obsession and madness, there was a sliver of pity.

Jian Fu ate a bowl of meat and tossed some shrimp paste into the broth, wincing as he burned his mouth. He mumbled through the pain, “By the way, remember that media outlet we saw in the cafeteria?”

He was talking about the one that misled Li Qingli into making a donation for ulterior motives.

Li Rong snapped out of his thoughts and pushed a bowl of ice jelly toward Jian Fu, gesturing for him to cool off before speaking.

After taking a sip of the ice jelly, Jian Fu heaved a sigh of relief and smirked smugly, like a detective about to share a big reveal. “I couldn’t figure it out that day, so I asked my uncle. Turns out, they filed a record because although the outlet’s main entity is a small-town morning paper, its investor is a dean from A University, Liu Tanzhi. They suspected the outlet might be backed by Hongsuo, so they recorded it immediately. Man, whenever District One deals with Hongsuo, it’s like someone hit their G-spot.”

Li Rong had to admit, while Jian Fu’s last remark was awkwardly phrased, it was oddly accurate.

Cen Xiao, who had just been scrolling through a menu on his tablet and ordering sweet potato chips, locked the screen and asked, “How did they confirm it’s Hongsuo-backed? At most, this sounds like an A University mouthpiece.”

The position of an academic director at A University isn’t particularly influential. Each department across various faculties usually has about five or six directors and deputy directors, primarily handling tasks like student dormitory assignments and promotional activities.

Jian Fu flashed a mysterious smile. “She might not be much, but her husband is a small-time professor at Hongsuo. You think this kind of smokescreen could fool us? Ridiculous! Her husband’s name is Li Baishou. Ever heard of him?”